History
Every total solar eclipse of the last 100 years
All 73 total eclipses from 1926 to 2026, decade by decade: wartime expeditions, Concorde, Cold War rivalries and the crowds of 2017 and 2024.
History
Who first recorded a solar eclipse?
From a clay tablet in Ugarit to Assyrian chronicles and Chinese oracle bones, the oldest eclipse records and how they are dated.
History
Eclipses that changed science
Prominences in 1860, helium in 1868, the hot corona and Einstein in 1919: what darkness at noon taught astronomers.
Why old eclipses still matter
For most of history a solar eclipse arrived without warning, and the people who saw one wrote it down as an omen, a disaster or a message from the gods. Those notes turned out to be precious. A clay tablet from Ugarit on the Syrian coast, Chinese oracle bones from the Shang dynasty and an Assyrian list of officials that mentions the eclipse of 15 June 763 BCE now help historians fix dates in the ancient world to the exact day.
Later observers came prepared. Astronomers travelled for months to stand inside the Moon’s shadow, and in a few minutes of darkness they found prominences in 1860, a new element they named helium in 1868 and, in 1919, the bending of starlight that made Einstein famous overnight. In 1973 a Concorde prototype raced the shadow across Africa and gave the scientists on board 74 minutes of totality.
Our history guides follow those stories in order, from the oldest written records to all 73 total eclipses between 1926 and 2026, and link each one to the eclipses still to come.